Showtime
My Blackberry Enterprise Server Push Utility for the Lotus Notes Client, allows you to create Jobs for individual Channel, Message, and Browser Content Pushes, as well as allows you to delete Pushed Channel Icons from defined recipient devices.
Contact Information
Blogger, podcaster, writer, and geek Chris Toohey covers topics from application development to the latest must-have-gadgets.
dominoGuru.com on Facebook
Latest Updates
More on Mailer...
More on Tesla...
More on Junction Lite...
More on Remote Console...
More on Controller API Utility...
Products & Applications
Time Tracker
The idea is simple. At the start of your day - upon completion of your first task - create an entry highlighting what you did and whether you feel it was an efficient or inefficient use of your time. Based on several requests, you can also select the priority, apply categories, or even align your time against a project.
For Lotus Notes Client v8.0 and above, you can use the Time Tracker Widget to make this process even easier!
Zephyr
My Configuration-based Rich Text Mail Merge and Emailing Utility, Zephyr allows you to create rich, data-driven emails to support automated workflow - all via Microsoft Word Mail Merge-like architecture. Dear <firstname> allows you to personalize each email message not only to the individual recipient, but also to the individual application workflow event!
xCopy
xCopy is a simple configurable xCopy client for the Lotus Notes client. By creating and defining xCopy Profiles, you can batch process your file backup or remote upload jobs. With the addition of the xCopy sidebar widget, you can easily kick-off these jobs, and modify both the xCopy Profiles and xCopy itself.
Community & Resources
Lotus Technical Information & Education Community
The Lotus Technical Information & Education community is comprised of IBM, business partner, and customer subject matter experts who use product wikis, published articles, white papers, community blogs and the latest in social media to build and share high quality technical content.
OpenNTF.org - Open Source Community for Lotus Notes Domino
OpenNTF is devoted to enabling groups of individuals all over the world to collaborate on IBM Lotus Notes/Domino applications and release them as open source.
developerWorks Lotus : Wikis
Share your deployment experiences and best practices in our wikis and help IBM to create scenarios for successful deployments. Contribute to the community by collaborating on shared content and leverage the shared knowledge from that community.
Sync your Facebook Events (and Friends Birthdays) to your Lotus Notes 8.5 Client Calendar
11/20/2009 12:08:00 AM by Chris Toohey
I'm certain that it'll come as no shock to you that I'm a fan of Facebook. I use it to reach out to friends, communicate across various communities that I participate in, and really like the evolution of features that the platform delivers release after release. No, I don't do Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, or Farm Town. I connect with fellow yellowbleeders, often successfully doing so beyond the yellow bubble, and have often communicated information that several individuals have said they would not have known had they not first heard it from my numerous Note and Link posts. I'm connected to the Lotus Knows, Lotus Technical Information and Education, and various other IBM Lotus-themed Fan pages, which are amazing resources themselves.
From these Fan pages, I get event invitations to things like Lotusphere 2010. Y'know, small local outings and stuff.
The problem with this is... I keep my calendar in Lotus Notes, not on Facebook. I can respond to any number of Events that I like, but quite frankly it's going to slip my mind if it's not in Lotus Notes, on my Blackberry, and available to me in the context of my day-to-day work.
The good news is that the Lotus Notes 8.5 Client (and specifically the 8.5 Mail Template) allows you to import iCalendar Feeds into your Lotus Notes Calendar. The great news is that there's a Facebook application that will take your Events (and even your Friends birthdays) and create an iCalendar Feed for you -- allowing you to take your Events to GMail, Microsoft Outlook, RSS Feed Readers, and even (you guessed it) Lotus Notes!
fbCal, Facebook's missing Calendar feature, is a slick little Facebook application that delivers the goods. After allowing it access to my Events and configuring which ones I want to see, fbCal went to work. The result was a custom iCalendar Feed that I could easily plug into the iCalendar Feed-friendly Calendaring app. Lucky for me, Lotus Notes 8.5 was up to the task and within a few mouse clicks, I had all of my upcoming Facebook Events neatly entered into my Lotus Notes Calendar.
How easily, you ask?
Your first step would be to go to http://www.fbcal.com/ and complete their step-by-step directions. The site explains:
In order to get your calendars, you must first log into Facebook and give permission to fbCal to access information. You'll have 2 steps that you have to confirm in facebook:
- Allow Access
- Allow offline Access
A few clicks here, and you're presented with their iCalendar Feed configuration form:
Once you complete the form -- setting your time zone, what information that you're pulling into your Lotus Notes Calendar, etc. -- right-click on the iCal option from the fbCal form and copy the link address (as illustrated above). This will be a webcal:// URL to your specific Facebook Events iCalendar Feed.
Now, from the Lotus Notes 8.5 Client, open your Lotus Calendar and select Add a Calendar... from the left-hand navigator:
When prompted with the Add a Calendar dialog, select iCalendar Feed from the Add drop-down menu and enter the webcal:// URL for your fbCal iCalendar Feed.
Color-code the calendar entries to your preference, and a simple OK finishes the job!
The result: your Facebook Events will now show as Calendar Entries in your Lotus Notes Calendar!
And it works great! You can easily toggle the entries from your Lotus Notes Calendar allowing you to declutter as needed. Need to make changes to your settings or remove the imported Facebook iCalendar Feed from your Lotus Notes Calendar? You'll now see your Facebook Events under the Show Calendars section of your Lotus Notes Calendar navigator:
I'd like to give a huge thank you to John Smart of GreyDuck Technology who originally posted a link to fbCal on -- you guessed it -- Facebook, and really was the one that came up with the idea of using this to generate an iCalendar Feed that could be imported into the Lotus Notes 8.5 Client. His original post can be found here.
|
Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. |
You can use Facebook's own export feature to get an iCal feed of your events. Not the birthdays, though: http://www.tipstrs.com/tip/7010/Facebook-events
@Oliver:
The difference here is that this isn't an export of your events, but a feed of your events. The export will need to be re-imported again and again while the feed option updates your Lotus Notes Calendar automatically upon addition of a new Event.
Nice post! funny, we take all these kinds of things for granted and assume that millions of peopel will just figure this out because we now to an ical feed. But they don't, so posts like this are really great in showing how extensible Notes really is!
Gee thanx! Now every user in my org will bug me about problems with Facebook. (Just kidding. This is actually very neat) ;-)
@Mary Beth It's the simplest demo, and very effective. I have a Google calendar with all the events and appointments related to all my family. That calendar is a collection of the individual calendars of the family members. Show users how you can add such a calendar ... with live data ... to your Notes calendar and switch it on and off with one click ... It's a very convincing experience. Well done, team! :-)
Great article. I really like to have the ability to use this with Notes. Great Job!
@Oliver is right. If you copy that URL, you can get an automatic feed. He's right when he says that birthdays aren't part of the feed, too. However, it asks me for my username and password every time, even thought I check "Do not ask me again". Is this a bug?
We are very happy at fbcal when fbcal users are happy. I hope for you that Lotus Notes implement the webcal protocol. If there is anything else we can do to simplify Lotus Notes users, just tell. We are listening.
@Mary Beth:
Real World usage walkthroughs on features like this can really drive the point home. Sure, the functionality was there, but most people don't see an application of the functionality until there's a detailed example staring them in the face that also hits home with how they would use it.
Think about it: how many salespeople can now keep track of their customer meetings and their karaoke happy hours?! Lotus Knows you work and play!
@Lars:
Between them tracking Facebook Events in their Lotus Notes Calendars and feeding goldfish in their sidebar, your users are pooched! ;-)
@Perry:
Thanks! I'd like to thank the team at IBM/Lotus for giving us this functionality (as well as the development team at fcCal to cracking the lack of a Facebook Events Calendar Feed!).
@John:
Well, I don't think the copy of the URL displays a true iCalendar Feed but rather a xhtml, css, and js-filled visual representation of your upcoming events. Since it's not a oranges:oranges comparison, I wouldn't say that there's an issue with the authentication rather than it just being different.
If you were to get prompts while reading the Google Calendar Feed, or another out of the box option, I'd say it's a potential bug.
That being said, I think this is just working as intended.
@Frederic:
The fbCal iCalendar Feed works perfectly with the latest release of Lotus Notes (Lotus Notes 8.5.1), Frederic, so no worries there. Thanks for creating this sweet app for Facebook and really addressing the functionality gap!